Are automotive 'black boxes' secure?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed
a rule this month ordering automakers to put so-called "black boxes"
in all new vehicles by late 2014, but some experts are concerned
that the new rule won't protect the security of the data stored
inside.

A member of a working group at the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has cited
problems with the new rule because electronic data recorders
(EDRs, also known as "black boxes") could reportedly be accessed
by anyone who wants to tamper with data after an accident. "We're
all for event data recorders," Tom Kowalick, chairman of the IEEE
Global Standards for Motor Vehicle EDRs and an author of seven
books on EDRs, told Design News. "But we're also for some kind of
basic consumer protection."

Kowalick contends that numerous companies already make
software-based solutions for downloading and altering data after a
crash. "Last time I looked, there were 23 companies making
products that allow someone to erase your crash data," Kowalick
told us.

It is important to have black-box-like feature sets in vehicles. If video recorded just prior to an accident can be retrieved, it is really handy for insurance companies and possibly as additional record for legal proceedings. Having said that, it is important that the video data are not misused. There are ways in which secure solutions can be implemented using the secure features available on some embedded processors that prevent people from tampering or misusing the video data. Ė Anshuman Saxena, Texas Instruments

It makes perfect sense that if a person was intentionally speeding and got in an accident, they would not want the data to remain intact. Thus, I suspect that there will be an aftermarket for data tampering under the guise of "data security."